He was a figure so powerful that prime ministers shamelessly wooed him. But yesterday, he was reduced to a tired, sad old man as he sat before a committee of interrogators.

The aura had gone. He was a hesitant, apologetic, and humbled shadow of his former self.

Rupert Murdoch does not deserve any sympathy for the position in which he finds himself. His fortune has been built on a hard-nosed approach to news and exposing wrong-doing. Had it been a politician or a celebrity at the centre of such a controversy, he would not have blinked as his news hounds went for the jugular.

A foam pie attack by an anarchist provided a dramatic distraction from the grilling, leaving enormous question marks over security.

But froth apart, the general theme of the Murdoch's defence was that they couldn't be expected to micro-manage a global business to the extent that they could possibly have known phone-hacking had become part of the culture.

"I have no knowledge of that," was a line frequently repeated.

Whatever conclusions are produced by the phone-hacking inquiries, the media empire created by Rupert Murdoch will be forever damaged not just by the phone-hackers but by an appalling and shocking lack of management by senior executives.